AWS - Amazon Machine Images (AMI)

• AMIs can be selected based on:
• Region
• Operating System
• Architecture (32, 64 bit)
• Launch Permissions
• Storage for the root device (Root Device Volume)
• Instance Store (Ephemeral Storage)
• EBS backed volumes
• For EBS Volumes
• Root is an EBS volume created from an EBS snapshot.
• For Instance Store Volumes
• Root device is an instance store volume created from a snapshot stored in S3.
• Instance store volumes cannot be stopped. If the underlying host fails, you will lose your data. Data is not lost even if the instance is stopped.
• You can reboot both, without losing data.
• By default, both the root volumes will be deleted on termination. However with EBS volumes, you can tell AWS to keep the root device volume even after termination.